So tonight, at my workplace, a high-schooler’s graduation party. It was a fun crowd – lots of drama-nerds who aren’t afraid to have silly fun. But I’m struck – as I have been many times before – at the music these kids listen to. Here’s the last ten or so songs they’ve played:
- Stayin’ Alive (Bee Gees)
- Beat It (Michael Jackson)
- Bohemian Rapsody (Queen)
- Some hip-hop song I didn’t recognize
- Thriller (Michael Jackson again)
- Shout (you know, from Animal House)
- Kung Fu Fighting
- My Shirona (they all cheered and said “yeah!” at the opening chords)
- Like A Prayer (Madonna)
- You spin me right round, baby, right round (okay, that’s probably not the real title, but you know what I mean).
The dancers are having so much silly fun it’s really infectous – singing very loudly along to Bohemian Rhapsody, making werewolf dance moves for Thriller, and so on.
But what I can’t get over is, almost all the songs they’ve danced to are songs that were around when I was in high school (or earlier). I mean, I’m 35 years old. Most of the guests at the party tonight are half my age. Why aren’t they listening to music from their own time?
And this group isn’t unusual. Okay, maybe a little – I don’t hear Bohemian Rhapsody played at many of the wedding receptions I attend – but most of them feature a lot of songs from my kidhood. (The most popular wedding reception song – the one I hear at virtually every wedding reception that has a lot of young people dancing? The Village People’s “YMCA.”)
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I really like a lot of these songs. Plus, as I said, the dancers are hilarious (and intentionally so). But it just seems a little weird.
P.S. It may be relevant to mention: The group tonight is pretty much entirely white. (And that’s how it usually is here – this is Oregon, after all).
P.P.S. The party’s over now, they’re cleaning up. I just overheard one girl singing a verse from “Leaving On a Jet Plane” to herself..
You spin me right round, baby, right round (okay, that’s probably not the real title, but you know what I mean).
I think the title of the song is Watch Out Here I Come.
Ahh, ’80s music. I think the thing is that these people won’t know what the really cool contemporary music is until they start getting exposed to it in college. Because the really good popular ’90s and beyond music is stuff like grunge, that doesnt necessarily make for a good dance party. (I guess they could do punk or ska, but what the hell)
But all the good punk and ska music comes from the 70s and 80s.
There’s still some good ska, punk, and skapunk out there. FIF and Slackers, for example.
By and large, though, I think the fact that kids these days listen to 80’s music has something to do with the fact that mainstream music hasn’t come out with much of any worth since the 80s. (I mean there’s some, Outkast comes to mind, but that’s about it). Popular media, be it music, movies, television, or whatever, is getting increasingly homogeneous, and youth, even those who are buying Britney Spears albums by the bucketful, are able to recognise that nothing mainstream today can compare to what there used to be.
I like most of that music… ok maybe not “my sharona”. But, I’ve heard worse. All tiem worst song was something by “The DiFranco’s”. I’m trying to remember the title…. It was bad!
“You Spin Me Round (Like a Record).” Dead or Alive, I assume. I still like “Brand New Lover” better…
Why aren’t they listening to music from their own time?
Because you can’t dance to it. Not in a fun, goofy, bouncy way, anyway.
Random wild speculation of the day:
Digital media, in particular computers and peer-to-peer networks, make it easier for older music to retain its force. A kid is browsing Limewire, sees some song title that catches her eye, and downloads it. The song turns out to be 20+ years old, but now the kid has been exposed to it, and has the resources to find more like it. All of this from the comfort of your living room.
re YMCA:
I notice this, too: it’s de rigeur these days. I’ve been to a bunch of weddings lately (though not nearly as many as you, Ampersand!) and it always gets played and always gets a big response.
I was at a wedding in Missouri last weekend, for a couple who were each 21, as were their friends, and it was a rural area and most everybody was heavy into country western music and the DJ was playing Shania Twain, Toby Keith, etc.
But still, the opening BAH-bah-bah of YMCA came on and everyone hollered and everyone under the age of, oh, 50 or so was immediately out on the dance floor ready to spell with their arms.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic in these days of SSM battles that a gay anthem is turning out to be the must-play song at hetero weddings?
A) Radio is a hideous monoculture right now. There’s no “real” music culture shared by pop culture at large, beyond the blandest, most focus-grouped hits.
B) You’re going to remember the hits and forget the misses, as usual. Much as you see purple cars all over the place once you’ve thought, huh, a purple car, you remember the music you remember and tend to block out the music you don’t.
C) Sampling and mashups demand and encourage a certain familiarity with the pop culture canon.
Nonetheless, D) Given the internet—MP3 blogs and P2P, specifically—I now listen to more new music than ever before. Far more. I’m crushing out on bands again, for the first time in years. (Man, have you heard the Dresden Dolls? Regina Spektor? The Mountain Goats? The Magnetic Fields?)
I think that the YMCA is popular for three reasons: 1.) It’s incredibly easy to dance to; even a three-year-old can do it; 2.) It’s even easier to sing along to than even an early Beatles song. The chorus is, like most good pop songs, instantly memorable but has the added bonus of consisting of four letters; 3.) Because few people actually listen to the lyrics, and because the Village People were always kitchy but never scandalous, the song is possibly the most inoffensive dance song ever made. Given a choice between spinning spinning, say, “YMCA” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Play that Funky Music (White Boy),” I’d pick “YMCA” because it contains absolutely nothing that could upset anyone, but can still get people up to shake-it more than other similarly inoffensive songs, like “Downtown.”
My prediction for the future: in addition to “YMCA” dominating the dance floors, I’ll lay money that the “Macarana” will be a big wedding hit.
Amp, it is obvious that we hung out with different sorts of crowds in highschool. While people you hung out with presumably listened to 1980’s pop music (leading you to expect that highschool kids in the ’00’s would listen to ’00 pop), most of the people I hung out with in highschool (1984-1987) listened to rock music from the late sixties and early seveties.
Obviously, these kids were conceptually more in tune with my crowd than with your crowd, even if they were musically in tune with your crowd.
Given the dominant musical styles of the 80’s, it makes sense that it is drama-nerds who now have reactionary musical tastes, while in the eighties it was mostly the stoners who had reactionary musical tastes. But it definitely isn’t a new thing to have reactionary musical tastes while in highschool.
Do modern day stoners still have reactionary musical tastes or do they listen to trip-hop and trance and such not?
I don’t know anyone who still listens to trip-hop, at least in the States. I’d lay money on the stoners listening to either the nü-metal groups like Korn, Incubus, et al. or, among the more hip stoners, the dancepunks or, among the computer-oriented stoners, trance. Of course, I might be wrong.
You spin me right round baby
Was that a modern dance version of it or the original? There’s been an ’80s revival going on in the techno/trance/house world. I have revved up versions of some ’80s hits on my dance cd’s, including some by Cindy Lauper. I also have a modern version of you spin me on one of my cd’s. I can’t sit still if it’s playing.
A lot of those songs are party hits anyway because they’re catchy. Every dj I’ve seen at SF con parties plays a lot of Queen and Village People, especially YMCA (complete with arm motions). “Shout” is practically required at these dances.
The only trip-hop I listen to is Lamb, but I’m open for other good suggestions.
Speaking of ska, I’m surprised they didn’t play “House of Fun” or “One Step Beyond.” Or did they?
So they listen to music that’s 20 years old? BFD. I listen to music that’s 200 years old, and I listened to it when I was in high school too. Better than the crap on pop radio.
There is so music from the 90’s they can dance to. C’mon, at least Fat Boy Slim.
Great, that’s what, six songs? Not to disparage Fatboy Slim’s music (I love it), but there’s only so much of it, and playing the same artist over and over isn’t a good dance mix. You just can’t bounce around a dance floor to Linkin Park.
I’d pick “YMCA” because it contains absolutely nothing that could upset anyone
Well, I’d say that anyone who doesn’t get upset either A) doesn’t have a problem with homosexuality or B) doesn’t know what the song is about.
Now, I’m not saying anyone should be upset about what the song is about. But, let’s face, homosexuality can upset a hell of a lot of people.
People don’t listen to verses. Ever. Unless they really like the song, but I doubt that very many people have liked “YMCA” enough to learn the verses.
The chorus will make any given song sink or swim, regardless of the content of the verses (consider the way that the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” was widely mistaken for a love song—the stalker bits are almost entirely relegated to the verses). The chorus of “YMCA”?
It’s fun to stay at the YMCA. I want to stay at the YMCA. Everybody stay at the YMCA.
Nothing explicit there, thus nothing offensive. Perhaps your experience is different from mine, but I’ve never encountered someone who boycotted or disliked “YMCA” based on its lyrical content. I’ve seen people dislike the song because the Village People were gay, but not because of anything they found in the song—and these people, I should add, are pretty rare; I’ve watched hardcore homophobes dance to “YMCA.”
So, I’d say that most of the people who boogie to that song—probably including most of the people at the weddings Amp referred to—fall into your category B: they don’t know what they’re dancing to, but damn is it catchy. And it has a cute dance, wouldn’t you know?
Keep bouncing on the walls of Fortress Europe!
Britain’s The Asian Dub Foundation has both great (well heavily political) lyrics and a very “danceable” rythm.
(PDP, would The Coup change your opinion about recent hip-hop?).
[Sorry, my comment was actually more relevant to that post by PinkDreamPoppies rather than Ampersand’s original post.]
It might also have something to do with the fact that a lot of other media are using 80s and late 70s songs. For example, The Wedding Singer with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore was all about dancing goofy and having fun listening to all that great 80s music including Dead or Alive (well, there was love story in there somewhere too).
People don’t listen to verses. Ever. Unless they really like the song, but I doubt that very many people have liked “YMCA” enough to learn the verses.
That’s not true of everybody. The lyrics are what will make or break a song for me — any song.
I’ve seen people dislike the song because the Village People were gay
And the most hilarious part of that is that only one member of the Village People was gay. The rest were completely heterosexual. (But they did still sing mostly about gay topics.)
And I’m not saying people do (or have) gotten upset about the song. I’m saying they could. It’s not an inherently inoffensive song.
Being barely 18 years old (It’s my birthday!), my music library consists almost exclusively of jazz and some classical. These are timeless things that never fade with “the times”.
Who are they kidding? I mean, Bohemian Rhapsody is lots of fun, but you can’t dance to it! :p
And if you want 80’s dance music, what about “Save it for Later” by English Beat???? I guess it doesn’t have the kitch factor, tho.
–pseu, who was in her 20’s during the 80’s.
we like the music coz it sounds better and plus we are the new age not the old time .. its time to build a world of are own in the future its are say not yours :), you dont have any more time so enjoy it wile you can. hahaha!
It’s deja vu all over again.
In my day, kids knew the difference between “our” and “are.” And “coz” was spelled “cuz.” And we did it uphill, both ways.